![]() ![]() Get ready to mark your calendar and root for Team USA. But there will also be plenty of chances to catch the events on prime time if you’re more of a casual viewer who doesn’t mind spoilers along the way. Since this year’s Winter Olympics will be taking place in Beijing, China, there will be a major time difference. There will be much discussion about this choice.The 2022 Winter Olympics are finally here, and while we’re still trying to figure out how it’s been four years (!!) since the last winter games took place, you’re going to want to pay extra special attention if you’re hoping to catch the figure skating events live. It is an in-your-face response to those Western nations, including the U.S., who have called this Chinese treatment of that group genocide, and diplomatically boycotted these Games. “It’s a statement from the Chinese president Xi Jinping to choose an athlete from the Uyghur minority. “Mike, this moment, uh, is quite provocative,” Guthrie said to Tirico. The Dynamic, Superbly Named Event That the Next Winter Olympics Should Add The Olympics Hero Who Embodies Why the Games Still Matter The Olympics Figure Skating Gala: Who Wore It Better? How Much Should Anyone Care About the Michigan-Wisconsin Handshake Fight? So a very significant moment here,” said Tirico, fumbling for words. “Of course, those are the people from the region in northwest China that has … attracted so much attention in the conversation of human rights, and that ethnic minority … comments from the United States government, among others, of genocide being committed against the Uyghurs. It was a jaw-dropping moment, as if Germany had chosen a Dachau prisoner to light the cauldron at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and Tirico and Guthrie were clearly taken aback by China’s choice of final torchbearer. Most of the rest of the world is financially beholden to China in one way or another, which emboldens Xi and the Party to say and do basically whatever they want without much fear of meaningful diplomatic reprisal. China can take this provocative stance with relative impunity because of its global economic status. Xi’s point, as far as I understand it, is that the Uyghur genocide isn’t a genocide at all, that China has done nothing to be ashamed of, and that anyone who thinks differently can go suck eggs. The repression of the Uyghurs-like the Beijing Olympics and most other political choices made in China-is the handiwork of the nation’s autocratic leader, Xi Jinping, a man who also believes in getting straight to the point. A journalistic philosophy of studied neutrality falls short when faced with a bad-faith actor that exploits that neutrality, that treats it as a license to flaunt its misdeeds to the world. While speaking plainly about what credible evidence indicates China is doing to the Uyghurs might endanger NBC’s finances and the safety of its reporters, not speaking plainly about what’s happening would serve the interest of Xi above all others-certainly above the interest of the viewers who want to understand the context of what they’re watching. Rather than illuminating or clarifying the situation by presenting multiple “sides,” it would do the work of Xi’s government by muddling the plain reality, and treating the Party’s solo spin-its propaganda-about its atrocities in Xinjiang as having equal weight as all other evidence. If, for reasons of realpolitik, NBC decides to treat Xinjiang as a “he said/she said” situation-a story with two sides worthy of equal acknowledgement and understanding-then its coverage would cease to be journalistic and would instead become collaborative with China. Practically every other credible source of information about what’s happening in Xinjiang corroborates the existence of ongoing human rights abuses there, including testimony from Uyghurs who have escaped such oppression or who are trying to save their family members who are still experiencing it. There would be several problems with this choice, if NBC were to make it. It will play the story straight down the middle and take care to refrain from taking a stance either way. ![]() While the network won’t evade the story, it will also take care to hedge whenever it is mentioned. ![]() It’s a no-win situation for NBC, and the question executives have surely been asking themselves is this: What is the least worst way for the network to lose? Its early coverage of the opening ceremony might offer a clue: My gut tells me that NBC will cleave to objectivity and treat China’s human rights issues as a story that has two sides.
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